The Life Word includes some of my thoughts, along with writings ancient and modern I find interesting. I trust you'll find these thoughts helpful and encouraging.

27 November 2006

Living Like Jesus--a call for unity of relationships

The Atlantic Monthly (11/94) told about superstar tenors Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo, and Luciano Pavarotti performing together in Los Angeles. A reporter tried to press the issue of competitiveness between the three men.

“You have to put all of your concentration into opening your heart to the music,” Domingo said. “You can’t be rivals when you’re together making music.”

That’s also true in the church.

The foundation for believers’ oneness is the unity God granted in answer to Jesus’ prayer that His people “may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me” (John 17:21).

God’s Interest in our Unity

Comfort in Christ

Comforting is God’s proper work, for he turns earlier desolation into perfect consolation for individuals. This encouragement in Christ is the support Jesus gives to his followers.

Consolation of love’. The basic sense of the verb in classical Greek was ‘to speak to someone in a friendly way’

Where as once our consciences spoke accusingly to us and about us, now the sweet words of love settle our hearts by their soft, gentle expressions.

Companionship of the Holy Spirit: Participation in His gifts and influences

Concern and Compassion

There is this great experience of mercy from God. If you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, then you have experienced God’s compassion. You deserved hell, yet he loved you and died for you. He leads you in this life and will yet lead you to heaven. You have known great mercy.

God’s Instructions for our Unity

Since we have been blessed with such riches in a magnificent way, let us hear Christ’s exhortation through His own example:

Submission (a bow)

Servanthood (a towel)

Suffering (a cross)

Has it ever occurred to you that one hundred pianos all tuned to the same fork are automatically tuned to each other? They are of one accord by being tuned, not to each other, but to another standard to which each one must individually bow. So one hundred worshipers [meeting] together, each one looking away to Christ, are in heart nearer to each other than they could possibly be, were they to become ‘unity’ conscious and turn their eyes away from God to strive for closer fellowship. A. W. Tozer, The Pursuit of God